Protestantism in the Waldensian Valleys - James Aitken Wylie

Chapter 10
The Year of the Plague
A WHOLE century nearly wore away between
the trampling out of the Protestant Church in
Calabria, and the next great persecution which
befell that venerable people whose tragic history
we are recording. We can touch on a few only, and
these the more prominent, of the events which fill
up the interval.
The war that La Trinita, so ingloriously for
himself, had waged against the Waldenses, ended,
as we have seen, in a treaty of peace, which was
sigmed at Cavour on the 5th of June, 1561,
between Philip of Savoy and the deputies of the
Valleys. But though the cloud had rolled past, it
had left numerous and affecting memorials of the
desolation it had inflicted. The inhaoitants
descended from the mountains to exchange the
weapons of war for the spade and the pruningknife.
With steps slow and feeble the aged and the
infirm were led down into the vales, to sit once
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